Heavily soiled floor coverings, especially the carpeted floors of business premises having considerable public traffic, can usually no longer be cleaned satisfactorily with only a vacuum cleaner because very often the dirt penetrates into the textile floor covering so deeply that it can be removed only by an additional mechanical cleaning process, for instance, by brushing the floor covering. The brushing devices usually employed for this purpose have a motor-driven cylindrical brush which is rotatably supported in a suction opening of the equipment. The bristle lining of this brush engages the textile floor covering with the individual bristles, whereby the dirt is separated and then is seized and carried away by a suction air stream which flows in through the suction opening of the equipment. To this end, the brush device is connected detachably to a known suction device or vacuum cleaner of the above-mentioned type.
In the known suction devices or vacuum cleaners, the electrical and/or electronic components are accommodated in the cover and the handle serves only for moving the suction device about. The handle is not used for gliding the cleaning device, for which purpose an additional manual guide tube is provided. This additional manual guide tube is disposed between the cleaning device and a suction hose having the plug-in sleeve. The consequence of this arrangement of the electrical and/or electronic components is that the center of gravity of the suction device is relatively far above the floor and the distance from the cleaning device is relatively great, whereby an electric cable and the suction hose must be correspondingly long. This makes the equipment more expensive. A significant disadvantage of this prior art arrangement is that cleaning with such a suction device and the associated cleaning device is difficult, since the suction device is easily upset if it is dragged via the suction hose when the manual guide tube is moved back and forth and the suction device is not at the same time held by the handle. In addition, the long lines are in the way, since they must frequently be cleared out of the path of motion of the cleaning device. Another disadvantage is that the cleaning device often cannot be moved back and forth easily via the manual guide tube because of the connected suction hose.
Tank type vacuum cleaners with a power driven nozzle have been commonly used to clean the floor coverings of business premises. The present invention provides an upright vacuum cleaner which may be provided with a power brush and is suitable for cleaning floor coverings in heavy traffic areas without the attendant disadvantages of tank type vacuum cleaners which have been hereinbefore discussed.